The Legacy of the Bicycle

The bicycle is making a comeback today largely because of its affordability, portability, and its ecological friendliness. In the late 19th century, when it was first introduced in America, the bicycle revolutionized the lives of ordinary citizens, especially women and African Americans. Sue Macy’s Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (with a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) charts the dramatic changes that resulted from the bicycle.

When you think about it, when we were kids, as soon as we could ride a bike our lives changed dramatically. We could ride to a friend’s house who lived two miles away instead of just playing a pick-up game of kickball with the neighborhood kids. We could ride to the Dairy Queen and buy an ice cream cone, ride to a piano lesson or football practice. It gave us independence, too.

For women at the end of the 19th century, one change set off many others. Not only could they get around freely and efficiently, but women also invented things to help them hold their skirts in place or carry groceries home, designed bloomers so they wouldn’t have to ride sidesaddle, and they could exercise. There were political debates about whether women should be allowed to ride. Some of the opposition was even led by other women! Charlotte Smith, for instance, fought for the rights of female workers for 15 years, but focused much of her wrath on the bicycle, calling it “the devil’s advance agent morally and physically in thousands of instances.” On the other hand, Albert Augustus Pope, the man who through his manufacturing and marketing innovations single-handedly propelled the bicycle to the peak of its popularity, took a stand (through his advertisements) in favor of bloomers. The bicycle may have gone out of favor in 1897, but the changes it helped bring about remain.

Learn more about the bicycle’s influence in this interview with author Sue Macy.

Extended Family

The relationship between the third-grade heroine and her grandfather forms the core of Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream by Jenny Han, illustrated by Julia Kuo. It’s relatively rare to find new books with portrayals of an intergenerational family living together under the same roof.

Tomie dePaola’s Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs and his 26 Fairmount Avenue books spring to mind. And for older readers, there’s Paul Fleischman’s The Borning Room, and two books by Sharon Creech—Heartbeat and Granny Torelli Makes Soup. And one of my favorite tributes to intergenerational families and relationships is a nonfiction title—Eloise Greenfield's book written with her mother, Lessie Jones Little, Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, which covers life from the late 19th-century through the mid-20th-century. This was (and is) a common experience for many families, especially when they were first arriving in the United States.

Clara Lee confides everything in Grandpa, including her wish to be Little Miss Apple Pie in their town’s Apple Blossom Festival. Grandpa’s unfamiliarity with some of the rituals of the Apple Blossom Festival gives Clara Lee reason to explain them (for his as well as readers’ benefit). And when her anxiety about preparing for the contest causes her to grow impatient with her six-year-old sister, Emmeline, Grandpa may be gentler with the third-grader than perhaps her parents would be, but his disappointment in her behavior makes a greater impact on Clara Lee.

In the book’s most poignant scene, Clara Lee tells her grandfather about Miss Little Apple Pie hopeful Dionne Gregory bragging to Clara Lee that her great-great-great-uncle was one of their town’s founding fathers, and that her family is “as American as apple pie.” His response—that her Korean American heritage makes her more of a person, not less of a person—provides the perfect reassurance for Clara Lee. He gives Clara Lee a way of perceiving herself that will far outlast a Little Miss Apple Pie crown.

A Child's-Eye View

There’s Going to Be a Baby by John Burningham, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, unfolds as an ongoing conversation between mother and child. It’s an exploration of how things will change when their new baby arrives. Each activity—a meal in a restaurant, a visit to the zoo, an errand at the bank—presents a way for the mother to gently reintroduce the topic of the forthcoming addition to their family (“Maybe when the baby grows up, it will be a chef and work in a restaurant,” his mother suggests). Yet Burningham and Oxenbury remain entirely within the child’s perspective.

The boy’s fantasies of his new baby brother or sister as a chef or a zookeeper or—best of all—a banker bring comic relief. The scenes between mother and child remain within a realistic context. The child’s fantasies unfold as pixelated comics-style panels, such as the images of the banker-baby in a button-down shirt and tie counting piles of coins. The fantasies gauge the boy’s emotional ups and downs: when his mother says the baby might grow up to be a zookeeper, he says, “Then the baby might get eaten by a tiger” (not to worry—the boy’s fantasy shows only the infant’s exhaustion from cleaning zebras and feeding seals in a series of windowpane illustrations). At one point, just when the young hero seems to be warming up to the idea of a new sister or brother, he stands up in the tub and pronounces, “Mrs. Anderson’s baby threw up all over their new carpet.” Surely Mommy won’t bring a baby home now! The impact of his pronouncement feels more forceful because it’s spoken by the child not in response to his mother’s imagined future for the baby-to-come, but instead arises from his own thoughts during one of his daily rituals--taking a bath.

This is a journey of a child’s resistance to and gradual acceptance of the notion of a new baby in his home. The ending feels pitch-perfect. The boy confides in his Grandad, and his words reveal how much consideration he has given to this forthcoming change. He reviews highlights of the conversations he’s had with his mother: “Maybe it will be Susan or Peter. Maybe it will be good at cooking.” Author and artist keep the focus completely on the boy hero: “Grandad, the baby will be our baby. We’re going to love the baby, aren’t we?” Young readers who have trepidation about impending changes to their own families can see that other children have also been through this experience, and they are not alone in these confusing feelings.

No Gimmicks

Let us pause for a moment in praise of books that use design in service of their content.

So many books have flaps to lift or tabs to pull, or parts that pop up, and for no apparent reason, other than to give children something to do—a gimmick. One Blue Fish by Charles Reasoner, on the other hand, is a perfectly designed book. Each element of the book serves its sole purpose: to introduce youngest book lovers to colors, numbers, and creatures they are likely to encounter in their own surroundings.

Each number, spelled out, appears on the left in big, chubby, easy-to-read letters. The corresponding numeral is displayed--die-cut, or cut out in the shape of the numeral--on the right. With repeated readings, children start to see that the two belong together. They learn to identify the letters in the words, and the sounds they make. And when they look beneath the numeral, they see that the single “blue fish” goes with the “one” and the “1.” It’s a book they will want to come back to again and again because of the element of surprise. It becomes a peek-a-boo game, as they grow confident about what they will find under each number-shaped flap.

As with the best children’s books, the simplicity of One Blue Fish’s design is deceptive. Yet a book this clean, with all of its parts working together seamlessly, is very difficult to achieve.

Lifting the Veil

As an Upper West Sider in Manhattan, I live among Orthodox Jewish families. Parents drop off their children at the school on my block. I see the men in hats and women with their heads covered and wearing long skirts as they walk to services on Friday nights and stroll along the Hudson River with their children during the High Holy Days. Hush, by Eishes Chayil, took me inside this insular world and offered me a deeper understanding of its culture and customs. The novel’s narrator, Gittel Klein, lives just two blocks outside of the heart of the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, but that’s enough to give her a rare arm’s-length perspective of her community.

The goyishe (non-Jewish) family that rents an apartment from Gittel’s father may be off-limits, but Gittel and her best friend, Devory, form a friendship with Kathy, Gittel’s upstairs neighbor, and realize that she is not the devil she’s painted to be. This raises other questions for Gittel. That exposure to outside values factors into her contemplation of whether or not to confide what she comes to realize about Devory’s suicide at age 10. While Gittel spends the night at Devory’s house, she witnesses something she doesn’t quite understand but that fills Gittel with fear. Devory’s 15-year-old brother, who is home from yeshiva, comes to Devory’s room in the dark and goes under his sister’s blanket: “I saw the blanket, how it moved back and forth and back and forth so fast I thought they were playing tug-of-war.” Those are the only details the author gives, but they are the only details she needs to give. Gittel never discusses this with Devory, but she knows something is terribly wrong. Only as she prepares for her marriage does Gittel realize what happened to Devory, and she must either betray her community by telling the truth, or betray herself.

There has been some debate about whether Hush would have been better served if it had been published as an adult book rather than as a book for teens. But I believe it is solidly young adult. The author clearly traces Gittel’s coming of age, and the way that the gradual realization of what happened to Devory shapes the person Gittel becomes. The chapters in which the 12-year-old Gittel narrates perfectly capture that young, trusting mind attempting to make sense of her world and testing her theories. It’s a book filled with warmth, humor and respect for family and tradition. So when Gittel begins to question the dark side of tradition and absolute loyalty, we feel the devastating consequences as acutely as Gittel does.

A Rendezvous with History

Rita Williams-Garcia has many gifts. One of them, which may be hardest to achieve for any writer, is her ability to fill in only the details the narrator (and thus, the reader) needs in order to make sense of her experience. That’s what the author accomplishes through Delphine's narrative in One Crazy Summer.

Big Ma, Delphine’s paternal grandmother, does not embrace change. The Brooklyn household she runs with her son, Delphine’s father, is a traditional home, and those are the values she instills in Delphine and her sisters. So when Delphine and her sisters arrive in Oakland, Calif., and they find themselves immersed in the Black Panthers Summer Camp, they must sift through Big Ma’s beliefs and the values that their mother, Cecile, lives by to figure out what makes sense to them—as readers, we get to go on that journey with them.

The girls’ mother puts on a lot of armor. To survive as an African-American woman on her own, she has to. But Delphine doesn’t understand why that armor shields Cecile from her daughters, too. That’s another journey to understanding that we take with Delphine. There are no easy fixes for Delphine. There were no easy fixes in 1968. What the author does is create an opening to understanding. Cecile gives Delphine as much knowledge and exposure as she can handle and leaves a door open for future revelations. And Rita Williams-Garcia does the same for young readers. Brava!

Gone Reading

On Monday, January 10, Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile, won the 2011 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for beginning readers. This was the sixth Geisel Medal awarded.

We’ve reflected on the Newbery and Caldecott criteria in the past, now let’s look at beginning readers and the goals of the Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) Award: “The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award recognizes the author(s) and illustrator(s) of a book for beginning readers who, through their literary and artistic achievements, demonstrate creativity and imagination to engage children in reading.”

In the case of Bink and Gollie, the heroines themselves demonstrate creativity and imagination to engage children in reading. Gollie hikes “high in the pure air of the Andes Mountains” without ever leaving her house in the treetops. Bink in some ways plays the role of the beginning reader, as when Gollie leaves a note on her door while on her adventure that states: “To whom it may concern: I am on a journey….” And Bink says, “I’m baffled. Am I ‘whom’?” When Bink goes away and comes back, she finds another note: “Bink, I implore you, do not knock.” Bink wonders, “What does implore mean?” as she knock knock knocks at Gollie’s door. Young readers can figure out the general meaning from the context, but the words may well prompt children to pause and puzzle out their meaning, and then adopt the words for themselves.

The three brief stories, told mostly through dialogue, keep readers captivated. Fucile’s illustrations (which garnered a New York Times Best Illustrated Book citation) ramp up the humor. Take Gollie’s trip to the Andes, for instance. Inside, Gollie’s house is transformed into snow-capped mountains, while outside, Bink stands on the same familiar landing and knocks at the door where she always comes to call. In another episode, Bink buys a goldfish, and Fucile depicts Bink holding up Fred’s fish bowl in the movie theater so he can see, too. In my other favorite moments: when Bink goes to buy her “outrageous” socks, only her eyes and spiky hair clear the store’s counter; Bink and Gollie “compromise” by meeting on the stairway halfway between their two homes for pancakes (the striped sock that Bink forfeits in the deal serves as Gollie's wind sock--a fun pun--and later winds up on the summit of Gollie’s Andes Mountains).

Bink and Gollie stretch the vocabulary beyond the limits of your usual beginning reader (think Cat in the Hat, Frog and Toad, George and Martha). But the challenging words, couched in humor, are ones children will want to collect and try on for size in similar contexts. We may raise a generation of readers who say, “With whom am I speaking?” or “Don’t take my bike, I implore you.” Just when you thought text messages were butchering the language, here come Bink and Gollie to make the case for eloquence and cleverness!